Emotionally Focused Family Therapy (EFFT)

Emotionally Focused Family Therapy (EFFT) extends the principles of Emotionally Focused Therapy to mend and fortify familial bonds. The core objective is to cultivate secure family patterns, where attachment, caregiving responses, and emotional bonds are effective. EFFT centralizes on stabilizing negative interaction patterns, restructuring parent-child interactions, and consolidating the felt security through new connection patterns. Following attachment science, it guides families to experience swift progress as members become more responsive and engaged, uncovering and addressing previously unrecognized attachment-related emotions and needs, thus fostering individual growth and intergenerational relationship enhancement.

EFFT Courses

Begin your EFT training journey by exploring our list of EFFT-related courses, tailored to equip you with the skills necessary for successful family therapy. The steps indicated below are guidelines for those wishing to become Certified Emotionally Focused Family Therapists.

Fundamentals of Emotionally Focused Therapy | Recommended Step 1

Engage with the essence of Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) in our one-day Fundamentals of EFT (FEFT) course. Grounded in attachment science, this 6.25-hour workshop provides practical tools to enhance your therapeutic practice across individual, couple, and family modalities. Through didactic presentations, recorded client sessions, and experiential exercises, you’ll explore key EFT concepts and interventions. This course is a stepping stone into the transformative world of EFT, aligning you with effective techniques to address anxiety, depression, and relationship issues. Take this leap to augment your professional skills and make a lasting impact in your therapeutic journey​.

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EFFT Essentials | Step 2

An ICEEFT-endorsed EFFT Essentials training is the introductory 24-hour course in Emotionally Focused Family Therapy (EFFT), paving the way towards certification. This workshop equips therapists with the tools to navigate and mend familial emotional landscapes, fostering the restoration of family bonds. Participants will delve into attachment frameworks and experiential realms, explore emotion regulation, and learn practical EFFT steps to facilitate corrective emotional experiences. Completion of EFFT Essentials provides therapists with the tools to drive lasting positive change in the family dynamics of their clients.

EFFT Essentials will start in 2024. EFFT Essentials is equivalent to EFFT Level 1 + EFFT Level 2.

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Mastering Skills and Overcoming Challenges with EFFT: A Consultation Process | Step 3

Beginning in 2024, advance your practice and improve your client outcomes by taking your EFFT skills to the next level! In this two-part course, you will learn from expert trainers as they show and talk about their therapy sessions – where they get stuck, how they get unstuck, and how the attachment map and EFT Tango provide a beacon for the family therapist. Next, you will join with your colleagues as they show their work, and watch as expert trainers help guide the therapy process through feedback, consultation, and role plays specifically aimed at framing clients’ problems through the lens of attachment, mapping the process, maintaining momentum, unblocking barriers to caregiving, and more!

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SKILLS GUIDELINE FOR CERTIFICATION OVERVIEW (Click to expand)

Learning and integrating the EFT model includes development of the following skills. This list can be used as a guideline to assist supervisors and applicants to assess for readiness for certification.

Additional specific details and information for each EFT modality (EFIT, EFCT & EFFT) are available on the ICEEFT members website whereas this document is offered as a generic overview.

Alliance Skills

Therapist readily demonstrates…
– Attunement and empathic tracking of client’s experience.
– A safe-haven alliance (A.R.E.) including assessing risk, context, and contraindications.
– Focus on reactive patterns and validate client’s attachment strategies.
– Effectively engage with clients in all their diversity, including the negative impact of
– discrimination along with clients’ strengths and resilience.

Micro Skills

Therapist shows ability to …
– Reflect and validate client’s experience and identifies emotions and relational patterns.
– Validates vulnerabilities and coping strategies normalizing blocks.
– Asks evocative questions that help identify patterns, and elicit deeper emotions, underlying
– attachment fears, and longings.
– Asks open-ended questions and encourages self-reflection.
– Makes appropriate empathic conjectures that validate and deepen experience (e.g. self/other)
– Uses all micro skills together with RISSSSC prosody – slow, specific, soft, etc.
– Heightens experience with images and client’s emotional handles, where appropriate.
– Reframes experience – mostly in terms of attachment-related emotions.
– Evokes emotional experience and choreographs engaged encounters/enactments.
– Paces risk-taking holding client within the leading edge (e.g. window of tolerance).

Tango Skills

Therapist shows ability to …
Move 1: Identify relational patterns and affect regulation processes leading to self-perpetuating cycles.
Move 2: Assemble Emotion – Pinpoints trigger, perception, body sensation, meaning and action by focusing on and processing core emotions.
Move 2: Distills emotion with RISSSSC and engages present experience in highly focused manner.
Move 3: Sets up encounters/enactments that prompt new awareness and /or bonding experience.
Move 4: Processes encounters (Move 3) with client(s).
Move 5: Summarizes progress in the session, validating growth, contrasting new interactions and previous patterns.

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The Steps to Certification in EFFT

Additional Certification Steps

Beginning in 2024, therapists will be able to certify as an Emotionally Focused Family Therapist. Your certification not only elevates your professional credentials but also opens doors for international collaboration, continuous learning, and practice growth. We invite you to explore the certification requirements for EFFT and join us in advancing an evidence-based, impactful modality that significantly enhances the quality of familial relationships and the wellbeing of individuals within those family systems.

Step 4: Take an Approved EFFT Short Course

Deepen your EFFT learning with one or more of our ICEEFT-approved courses.
Coming in 2024.

Step 5: Supervision

Minimum of 8 hours of EFFT Supervision which can include up to 4 hours of group supervision.

Step 6: Application Package to ICEEFT

Submit your application package to ICEEFT for review by a Certified EFT Supervisor and Trainer. Full details are available to ICEEFT Members.

Achievement: Certified EFFT Therapist

Congratulations, you are a Certified EFFT Therapist! You have completed a major step on a lifelong learning journey.

EFT Resources

EFT Articles

EFT articles offer a wealth of information on this evidence-based approach to couples and family therapy. These articles delve into the core principles and techniques of EFT, showcasing its effectiveness in helping individuals and relationships achieve emotional bonding, improved communication, and lasting positive change.

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EFT Chapters

Emotionally Focused Therapy chapters in other publications often provide in-depth case studies, clinical insights, and practical applications, making them valuable resources for mental health professionals seeking to enhance their therapeutic skills and knowledge in the field of couples and family therapy.

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EFT Books

EFT books serve as invaluable resources for therapists, offering a comprehensive understanding of EFT’s principles and techniques. These books provide practical guidance and real-world examples, empowering therapists to enhance their skills in helping clients build stronger, more emotionally connected relationships.

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Non English

Non-English EFT publications play a crucial role in disseminating EFT principles and practices to a global audience. These publications offer therapists and researchers valuable resources in their native languages, facilitating the international expansion of EFT and enabling professionals to access the therapy’s benefits worldwide.

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Join a Worldwide Community of EFT Therapists

As a member of the International Centre for Excellence in Emotionally Focused Therapy (ICEEFT), you’ll join a global network of over 8,000 professionals, access cutting-edge research, receive our quarterly newsletter, enjoy discounts on training, and increase your visibility through our therapist directory. Benefit from exclusive webinars, forums, and the chance to connect with peers and leaders in Emotionally Focused Therapy.

Whatever your age, race, faith, gender identity, sexual orientation, class, ability, language or cultural background, you are welcome.

8,000+

Member Therapists

80+

Regional Communities and Centers

40+

Countries Around the World

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About Sue

Dr Sue Johnson

My work is primarily about creating a secure sense of connection with self and with others. Emotion has a deep logic to it, and we can learn to use it as a compass to guide our steps as we move with others through life.
Backed by years of research, my team and I want to help everyone learn about the revolutionary science of attachment and bonding. Growing emotionally and finding attachment at the heart of our humanity – what’s more thrilling than that?

Learn more about Sue at

drsuejohnson.com